I just had a chat with Windows Phone support attempting to solve an issue with Xbox Music songs not appearing on my phone. The answers I got were interesting and I wanted to share with everyone. This information is relevant for Windows 8, Xbox, Surface and Windows Phone 8 users. Essentially anyone using a Xbox Music enabled device which eventually will include iOS and Android as well. As a side note, Windows Phone support was excellent, much better than Xbox support which I had contacted about the same issue previously.

Here's the TL;DR version:

Personal items, i.e. music in your collection not downloaded via Xbox Music or Zune, cannot be streamed to devices such as Windows Phone 8, Xbox or Surface even if it has been Matched in the Xbox Music App on Windows 8. This ability is going to be added to Xbox music in the future as confirmed by the support person.

This limitation is not made clear anywhere in the App or in any of the online documentation that I was able to find. It created quite a bit of frustration for me personally. I am not a Zune/Xbox Music Pass subscriber so I was particularly excited when I saw Xbox Music match my content complete with the little cloud icon and the hover text "Matched (available here and in the Xbox Music Cloud for streaming on other devices)". These songs never appeared on my WP8 or on my Xbox.

This limitation is the cause of another frequently reported issue that may not be immediately clear to everyone, the Playlist Syncing issue. Xbox Music syncs all playlists across devices automatically when you sign in with your Microsoft account. However, these playlists will be empty on those devices if they are populated with personal content. These synced playlists are treated as unique items that cannot be deleted on those devices or unsynced. If you manually drag these playlists to the devices using the Windows Phone App/Windows Media player/iTunes they will be duplicated because these playlists appear as distinct from the synced playlists.

Here's the transcript of the chat.

[INFO]Katherine B.: Hello , my name is Katherine B. with Microsoft Support. Please give me a few moments as I review the information you've submitted.
Katherine B.: From what I understand your Xbox Music collection on your phone is not matching your PC, correct?
Ben: Yes
Katherine B.: What's the make and model of your phone?
Ben: Nokia 920
Katherine B.: Okay. Thanks. One moment while I look more into your issue.
Katherine B.: Just to clarify, you are attempting to download from the cloud on your phone, correct?
Ben: Yes.
Ben: As I understand it the songs in my cloud collection should automatically appear in my phone w/out downloading them
Katherine B.: Are these personal items (ie items you have obtained through another source besides Xbox Music) or Xbox Music items?
Ben: personal items which were matched using Xbox Music in Win8
Katherine B.: Ah, that would be the issue there. Currently only Xbox Music items will appear in the cloud.
Ben: this is something that will change?
Katherine B.: There are plans for it in the future.
Ben: i have a second issue
Katherine B.: Sure!
Ben: I have playlists that were created using Zune for my WP7 device
Ben: Xbox Music recognized these playlists when it was added
Ben: these playlists also appeared on my phone
Ben: the playlsists also appear on my Xbox console
Ben: however, both on my Phone and on my Xbox there are no songs in these playlsits
Katherine B.: Were these playlists populated by personal content? The Xbox and phone will recongize these playlists as part of the Xbox Music cloud, but if the playlists only contain personal items and not Xbox Music items, they will appear empty.
Ben: This is the case
Katherine B.: Alright, that would be it then. The Xbox Music app on the Xbox is only streaming content from the Xbox Music marketplace.
Ben: i have not found any documentation or any FAQ or Answers articles explaining these limitations of Xbox Music w.r.t. persaon content. It would be helpful if this was made more clear.
Katherine B.: I can forward that up. It may be that it's currently unclear because there are plans for personal content to be available in the future, but I do agree that it should be more clear about the current limitations.
Ben: I'm eager for that feature to be released, thanks for the help.
Katherine B.: No problem. I hope that helped clear some things up. For your records, here is your Service Request (reference) number: XXXXXXXXX. This acts like a receipt for our interaction. Is there anything else that I can assist you with?
Ben: nope
Katherine B.: Hope you have a good holiday![/INFO]

The most interesting tidbit here is the confirmation that streaming/syncing of personal items will be coming in a future release. No dates, but the fact that she implies the lack of documentation is due to it's impending release could indicate that it's coming quite soon. It almost sounds like it was intended to be ready for V1 release and was dropped at the last minute, a theory supported by the misleading information in Xbox Music in Windows 8.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this and/or it's something already widely known and I missed it, but I'll share anyways.

I hope it comes sooner than soon. Turns out there's an issue with zune pass subscribers trying to get music from their catalogue onto WP8 devices. Turns out the songs show up as in collection with only an option to buy, no download available and you can't transfer the songs from the pc to the device either.

I hope it comes sooner than soon. Turns out there's an issue with zune pass subscribers trying to get music from their catalogue onto WP8 devices. Turns out the songs show up as in collection with only an option to buy, no download available and you can't transfer the songs from the pc to the device either.

I can download the songs to WP with my pass. Just the sync is all F'ed up. Sometimes it takes a few seconds and shows prices of albums and songs, then the price are replaced with "download" after a few seconds.

So I already posted this in a thread, but I received no replies. I'm really curious if this windows phone rep is actually correct or if anyone can confirm that this is not true.

I am using a Windows 8 PC, and I have a Lumia 920. Any and all music that I download using the Xbox music app that is subscription music will not play on my phone. I can sync it to my phone fine, but whenever I try to play one of these songs on my phone, I get this message, "We are unable to confirm the media usage rights for this content." I was literally just told this by a windows phone chat "specialist."

"This is actually a known issue, and unfortunately, syncing subscription content from the PC to the Windows Phone 8 is not an available option at this time." He then went on to say, "It is a beta, there is no guarantee that it will change, however we are aware of the issue, and working toward a resolution."

Why can I download most albums to my PC hard drive via Xbox Music but when I try to download those same albums on my HTC 8X, Xbox Music says I must buy the album in order to download it. What gives? I can transfer songs from my PC to my phone, but once I try to play those files thru Xbox Music, I'm given the notorious "We can't verify media usage rights" error. Anyone experiencing the same thing? What a letdown... It wouldn't be so bad if there were an option in WP8 Xbox Music for low-quality streaming so to save my 2GB/month plan from going over the limit. Blast!

So I already posted this in a thread, but I received no replies. I'm really curious if this windows phone rep is actually correct or if anyone can confirm that this is not true.

I am using a Windows 8 PC, and I have a Lumia 920. Any and all music that I download using the Xbox music app that is subscription music will not play on my phone. I can sync it to my phone fine, but whenever I try to play one of these songs on my phone, I get this message, "We are unable to confirm the media usage rights for this content." I was literally just told this by a windows phone chat "specialist."

"This is actually a known issue, and unfortunately, syncing subscription content from the PC to the Windows Phone 8 is not an available option at this time." He then went on to say, "It is a beta, there is no guarantee that it will change, however we are aware of the issue, and working toward a resolution."

Soooooo this is absolute horse sh*t if it's true.

Hopefully I've understood your issue correctly the rep said syncing Xbox Music content to the WP8 was not possible. Although I have issues with playlists I can sync the drm music to my device just fine. One issue I had was that I couldn't download content on my phone or sync , performed a soft reset and the DRM content started working again.

I'm a little late to the party, but haven't had time to get all the ins and outs figured out. I just ran across an issue I hadn't been aware of. I almost always listen to music on wifi so I hadn't noticed until now. I am in process of re-adjusting my storage on Surface and started to check music files. Here is what I have run into and I tried similar thing on 920 with same results. I removed all of my purchased music from My Music folder so I could reassign sd card for Surface to read and store to. Remember this is my purchased music from other vendors. I opened music app and all artists were still there and would play music as long as wifi was on, cloud storage I assume. Now when I turned of wifi, it would not play music. I reinstalled an artist to My Music folder and it still would not play all of the album. It would play individual songs, but Play All said PC is offline. I always assumed Xbox music got some sort of licensing code to play the music I got with Pass, but it won't let me play my own music, locally stored. I thought I remember hearing about it uploading my titles to cloud but why is it not letting me play locally stored music? Is it streaming even music loaded on device? What really bothers me is I tried the same thing on 920 with similar results. Is it streaming the entire song, just getting license code, or what? I haven't noticed any major spikes in my data usage but I don't want to find out its streaming locally stored music and eating through my data. Work has had me busy and I haven't had as much time to play around with devices. I have enough data plan to cover just about anything but I don't want to burn through data unnecessarily. MS really needs to publish some info about how all this integration works. I don't have to time to trial and error learn all this crap and find the info spread out over 4 different site blogs.

Update. Surface has been downloading my purchased music. Leads me to believe it does not stream music if it is locally stored. I guess it only needs license code or something else. Xbox music is a mess now. You think its bad, wait until it is downloading 12gig of music. It is locking up, slow loading, closing program. Wish I had never started this.